The Gunners A novel

Review by New York Times Review

the characters in Rebecca Kauffman's "The Gunners" exhibit the range of personalities that you'd expect from a random sampling of Middle Americans: nice people, abrasive people, the churchy, the alcoholic, the educated, the not. You'd probably know which of them you'd prefer to sit with at a high school reunion. And yet Kauffman has done something remarkable with "The Gunners," the now grown group of childhood friends who adopted the moniker from the mailbox of the abandoned home they used as an after-school squat: She's made spending time with them not just tolerable, but delightful. And she's achieved this not by manufacturing likability, but by so convincingly rendering the affection between them that you accept each character's foibles as readily as they do one another's. It's a funeral that reunites this group: Sally, who suddenly and without explanation broke off contact near the end of high school, has committed suicide by throwing herself from a bridge. Now 30 years old, most of the friends have long since scattered from their working-class hometown in upstate New York, save for Mikey, the closest the novel has to a protagonist. Mikey, who's losing his sight to early-onset macular degeneration, lives a mostly solitary life - while he craves connection, he's better suited to distance than intimacy. When he was a boy, his nearest experience to parental tenderness was the gentle touch of a nurse conducting an eye exam; as an adult, he's so consumed with building a sensory inventory of his external world that he fails to develop human relationships. And yet he's kind and rocksteady, deriving his joy by quietly documenting the Gunners: Alice, Mikey's opposite in most ways, a brash lesbian marina owner who says what she feels, and she feels a lot; Lynn, a gifted pianist with a severed finger and quite a few A.A. chips; Sam, an Everyman who was reborn at the Christian camp where he worked after high school; and Jimmy, a math whiz who struck investment gold in Los Angeles but keeps a lake house near their hometown. As latchkey kids in an often harsh environment, the Gunners found that the most effective defense against pain was the denial of it. Thus, secrets were inevitably an essential ingredient of their dynamic, and Sally - already the most vulnerable, the sensitive child of an alcoholic mother - somehow became the keeper of them all. Each is convinced that theirs was the burden that drove Sally to leave the group and eventually take her own life. When they begin to reveal what they kept hidden as children, they find that their confessions are not met with forgiveness, discovering instead that forgiveness is unnecessary. Kauffman, though admirably direct in her language, doesn't always juggle all the moving parts gracefully; Jimmy, bearer of the most significant revelation in the novel, enters late and exits quickly, making his appearance feel almost like a cameo. Lynn's and Sam's roles feel front-loaded, their presences diminished in the latter half of the novel. And using Mikey, the most emotionally deficient of the friends, as the primary lens can be frustrating because his narrative hurries through the most fraught moments in the story. As a reader I understand that he wants to flee, yet I can't help wanting to stay. Still, there's so much generosity and spirit and humor shared by whatever characters are on the page at any given time that I was always happy to accompany them. And while not all the mysteries are resolved - least of all Sally's - that's really the point: Friends, especially childhood friends, don't need to fully understand one another in order to accept one another. XHENET ALIU is the author of the novel "Brass."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 20, 2018]

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Review by Booklist Review

They called themselves the Gunners after the name on the mailbox of the abandoned home they hung out in as kids: ringleader Alice, Jimmy the whiz kid, rambunctious Sam, piano-prodigy Lynn, steadfast Mikey, and sweet but secretive Sally. Now thirtysomethings, five remaining Gunners reunite in their small hometown outside of Buffalo after Sally's suicide. Sally had distanced herself from the group by the time they were all teens, and in the intervening years, she and Mikey, who also stayed in town, didn't even greet one another at the supermarket. As the night after the funeral and the weeks following it unfold, in this collaboratively narrated, then-and-now story, the living Gunners reveal, in turn, the burdens they knew Sally was bearing and the ways they each feel they caused her departure all those years ago. A little bit like The Big Chill, Kauffman's (Another Place You've Never Been, 2016) quiet and deep second novel reconciles the responsibilities we carry and the secrets we keep with the outsize pleasure of being known and loved by a chosen family.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Kauffman's perceptive, funny, and endearing novel (after Another Place You've Never Been) is set against the backdrop of a funeral in snowy Lackawanna, a depressed suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. The seemingly light (but deceptively profound) story follows a once-close-knit group of six friends as they navigate the stresses of adulthood while grappling with long-held secrets from the past. Called "The Gunners"-after the name on the mailbox of the abandoned house they hung out in as kids-30-year-old Mikey, Lynn, Alice, Sam, and Jimmy reunite for the first time since high school to pay their respects to their sixth member, Sally, who committed suicide. As with any coming-to-terms-with-past-decisions-and-getting-older exercise, the friends reminisce about old times and share their triumphant successes and embarrassing failures. Despite the well-trod premise, Kauffman's prose never veers into campy territory. The admissions of her characters provide deep insight into their individual personalities, and also into human vulnerability more broadly. These include Mikey's fear surrounding his waning eyesight and conflicted sadness about his strained relationship with his father; Sam's intense shame about a defining moment he had with Sally long ago; and Alice's outlandish behavior that masks an entrenched inner turmoil. Reminiscent of The Big Chill and St. Elmo's Fire, this remarkable novel is just as satisfying and provides readers with an entire cast of characters who will feel like old friends upon finishing. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Featuring six childhood friends who grew up in Buffalo, NY, and call themselves the Gunners, Kauffman's new work will remind many readers of the film The Big Chill. Once close, the friends have grown apart over time, with several having moved away. The suicide of Sally, estranged from her friends since high school, brings the group back together. Kauffman skillfully weaves reminiscences of their antics as children and teens with insights into their adult lives. Mikey, the only one to remain in the area, is the most fully developed personality, but Alice, Lynn, Sam, and Jimmy are all distinctive, well-conceived characters. During a weekend spent together, the Gunners wrestle with questions about why Sally took her own life and why she had alienated herself from them. As they grapple with guilt and long-held secrets, they slowly come to some conclusions. -VERDICT Neither dark nor despairing, this work admirably expresses the satisfying comfort derived from the survival of such long-term friendships even as it evokes sadness about the losses and challenges that come with transitioning to adulthood. A successful sophomore effort after Kauffman's well-received first novel, Another Place You've Never Been.-Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The loss of a friend from a group of childhood companions brings to light what has been hidden for 30 years.Sally is Mikey's first friend. Each living in a run-down neighborhood with single parents, they find in each other comfort and kindness. The rest of the neighborhood kidsAlice, Sam, Lynn, and Jimmyjoin with the twosome in a group of playmates whose relationships will last a lifetime. They call themselves The Gunners, after the name on the mailbox outside the abandoned home that becomes their hideout. There, they "invented jokes and games and secret languages, made plans, made trouble, bad-mouthed their parents, played cards, gambled, told stories, plotted against bullies, bickered, made up, luxuriated in boredom, and dreamed of the lives they would one day live, far from Lackawanna." Their group goes merrily ongrowing up, learning more of the world, falling in love, drinking, exchanging secretsuntil, all of sudden when they are 16, Sally dissociates from her friends completely, refusing to speak to them, avoiding their calls and efforts to engage. Fifteen years later, the group is reunited at Sally's funeral. Mikey, who is suffering from early-onset macular degeneration, is the only one who never left Lackawanna, and he is at once happy to be with his friends once more and devastated by the second loss of Sally. Each member of the group is convinced it is his or her fault that Sally left them, both times. Each has changed greatly over the years and is grappling with where to go next. When startling secrets are revealed, Mikey has another layer of self-exploration and sadness to sift through. Kauffman (Another Place You've Never Been, 2017) has created vivid and compelling characters struggling with what is in some ways the most universal dilemma: how to grow up. Mikey especially is mature and thoughtful but not at all precious; and the boisterous, hilarious Alice is charming despite her best efforts to behave otherwise. In fluid prose, Kauffman lays bare the lessons of youth and truth.A layered and loving bildungsroman of friendship. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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CHAPTER 1 Mikey Callahan discovered something about himself when he was six years old. Students from his first-grade class were taken one at a time from the classroom and ushered to the gymnasium for standard medical tests. The woman who barked his name, (although she called for Michael, instead of Mikey, as his classmates knew him), held his hand as she walked him down the hall, and her fingers were as dry and cool as a husk. In the gymnasium, there were rectangular tables, screens, clipboards, grown-ups dressed in white. A man with a rust-colored moustache put a cold rubber point into Mikey's ears, stared in at them, and led him through a series of easy tests; instructing Mikey to close his eyes and repeat words the man whispered, then listen to two recorded tones and tell him which was louder. Mikey proceeded to the next station, where he was asked once again to close his eyes, and say " Now ," when he detected that he had been touched, on his face or his arm, by the tip of a pen. Easy. Mikey liked this better than sitting in a classroom, and he enjoyed being touched in this way. Gentle, clinical. At the final station, an easel at the far end of a long table displayed a white paper with a pyramid of black letters on it. A woman stood next to the paper and pointed at letters one at a time, and Mikey read the letters back to her. The letters got smaller as she moved down the page, and he struggled to read the final two rows. The woman made a note on her clipboard, then she handed him a black plastic spoon and asked him to cover his left eye with it. She replaced the set of letters with a fresh one and repeated the exercise, with similar results. She said, "Cover your other eye now," and turned the page on her easel once again. Mikey did not raise the spoon to his face. He felt the heat of dark blood spreading up into his cheeks. He said, "But that's my good one." The lady said, "What now, hon?" "I can't cover this one," he gestured toward his right eye, puzzled by her request. "It's the one that works." The lady came and knelt before him. She looked at his face and said, "Oh, dear." Mikey didn't understand. She explained to him that both eyes were supposed to work; most people had two good eyes. Mikey nodded slowly as he considered this. He had a compulsion to nod when faced with unpleasant information. He said, "Please, let's not tell my dad." When Mikey got home from school that day, his father stared at his left eye, the bad one, with a look of mild distaste, then he lead Mikey through a series of his own tests, as though the school had exaggerated the condition. He made Mikey close his right eye and tell him how many fingers he was holding up. Mikey tried to answer correctly, fluttering his right eye open to peek. He begged his father not to make him wear a patch like a pirate, and his father said, "What in the hell would that accomplish?" His father told him he must make the decision, right at that moment, whether the world would know about the left eye, or whether it would be Mikey's secret, and he seemed relieved when Mikey quickly answered that it would be his secret. As though the condition, if known by others, would in some way reflect poorly upon both of them. They didn't speak of it again. Mikey's father worked for the meat-packaging facility in Eden, several towns over. He always smelled of blood and had red in the corners of his fingernails, carrying with him the insinuation of violence, brute force. His face was lumpy, as though it had been stuffed full, his eyes drooped. For Mikey's entire childhood, the two of them lived in the first floor of a townhouse on Ingram Street in Lackawanna, a depressed suburb of South Buffalo. Only half the homes on their block were occupied. The others had boards for windows, liquor bottles smashed into the front porches, stray cats shitting in overgrown lawns. The upstairs tenants in their townhouse wore slippers to the store and always smelled vaguely sulfuric, and they engaged in monthly screaming arguments with the landlord over late rent and threats of eviction. Mikey's father always paid rent on time, but sometimes he forgot about the utilities, and a man in navy would show up demanding a cash payment - saying that if they couldn't pay, he'd pull the plug on their house, and then how would they see at night? What would they eat? Mikey's father ate four things: cereal, apples, white bread with cold cuts, and Chips Ahoy cookies. Mikey was not introduced to other foods until he was offered them by his friends from their lunchboxes or by his friends' mothers in their homes. Mikey did not have a mother of his own, and because his father refused to provide any information on this matter, Mikey took it upon himself to search their home for clues. He looked for things he had seen in the homes of his friends belonging to their mothers: a ball of pantyhose or shoe with a pointy heel, long lists written in cursive, a little plastic basket filled with nail polish or a box of Tampax beneath the sink, an apron with roosters or reindeer embroidered onto it. He recovered not one piece of hard evidence in his own home. On one occasion, however, Mikey discovered a single item that didn't fit in his home; it wasn't quite right. It was a small suitcase located in the corner of his father's closet, beneath a stack of neatly folded sweaters in various shades of gray. The suitcase was tacky and bright - it was the only thing in their entire home that Mikey simply could not imagine his father purchasing. When Mikey opened the suitcase, the scent of the cobalt blue lining inside tickled at a memory, as faint and faraway and indistinct as a single puff of smoke. Maybe a memory of a memory. Even so, Mikey began to wonder if he had not been born out of a lady's peeing-hole (like his friends), but had simply arrived in this suitcase, which was perfectly sized to hold a small child and vaguely womb-like in its shape. Mikey had no proof that this suitcase had produced him, but as a young boy it was his most persistent theory, and he liked to open the thing and stroke its strange synthetic fur and imagine that life had begun in this soft, blue place. Mikey's father was a man of dark and quiet emotions. Things were rarely horrible between Mikey and his father, at least not in the usual ways; things were not vicious or unbearable. But things were never easy. Mikey's father had bad knees and bad moods, a shadowy disposition. He drank too often, (daily), but rarely too much in a single sitting - Mikey never once saw him stumble or slur or fall asleep upright in a chair. When Mikey was a child, his father's moods manifested in biting criticism over meaningless things and treacherous, silent evenings at the home when, for no reason at all, he would refuse to let Mikey out to play with his neighborhood friends. On these nights, Mikey would put himself to bed early just to remove himself from his father's presence. He would close his bedroom window so that he would not be pained by the faraway voices of his friends. Alice, Sally, Lynn, Jimmy and Sam became Mikey's friends when they were neighbor kids, all living on the same block, all seeking playmates as well as an escape from their own homes. The children claimed one of the abandoned homes on Ingram Street as their official meeting place, and the rusted mailbox mounted to the front door of the house read The Gunners in gold Mylar stickers. The house had been vacant for as long as any of them could recall, and they knew of no Gunners in the neighborhood, so they took the place over and assumed its name as their own. They furnished the main room of The Gunner House with items found on the side of the street: mildewed mattresses, throw pillows with cigarette stains, three-legged patio chairs, eyeless baby dolls, an artificial Christmas tree in such a tangle it took days to reassemble. They hung a flashlight from the center of the ceiling in this room, and it was in here that they invented jokes and games and secret languages, made plans, made trouble, bad-mouthed their parents, played cards, gambled, told stories, plotted against bullies, bickered, made up, luxuriated in boredom, and dreamed of the lives they would one day live, far from Lackawanna. As children, The Gunners could not have imagined that by the time they were sixteen years old, one of them would turn their back on the others, and the group would be so fractured by the loss of this one, the sudden and unexplained absence, that within weeks the other friendships would also dissolve, leaving each one in a dark and confounding solitude. Mikey Callahan became a sinkhole; everything inside just collapsed. Excerpted from The Gunners by Rebecca Kauffman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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